Chapter 9

The Galloping Troika. The End of the Prosecutor's
Speech

IPPOLIT KIRILLOVITCH had chosen the historial method of exposition, beloved by all
nervous orators, who find in its limitation a check on their own eager
rhetoric. At this moment in his speech he went off into a dissertation
on Grushenka's "first lover," and brought forward several interesting
thoughts on this theme.

"Karamazov,
who had been frantically jealous of everyone, collapsed, so to speak,
and effaced himself at once before this first lover. What makes it all
the more strange is that he seems to have hardly thought of this formidable
rival. But he had looked upon him as a remote danger, and Karamazov always
lives in the present. Possibly he regarded him as a fiction. But his
wounded heart grasped instantly that the woman had been concealing this
new rival and deceiving him, because he was anything but a fiction to
her, because he was the one hope of her life. Grasping this instantly,
he resigned himself.

"Gentlemen
of the jury, I cannot help dwelling on this unexpected trait in the prisoner's
character. He suddenly evinces an irresistible desire for justice, a
respect for woman and a recognition of her right to love. And all this
at the very moment when he had stained his hands with his father's blood
for her sake! It is true that the blood he had shed was already crying
out for vengeance, for, after having ruined his soul and his life in
this world, he was forced to ask himself at that same instant what he
was and what he could be now to her, to that being, dearer to him than
his own soul, in comparison with that former lover who had returned penitent,
with new love, to the woman he had once betrayed, with honourable offers,
with the promise of a reformed and happy life. And he, luckless man,
what could he give her now, what could he offer her?

"Karamazov
felt all this, knew that all ways were barred to him by his crime and
that he was a criminal under sentence, and not a man with life before
him! This thought crushed him. And so he instantly flew to one frantic
plan, which, to a man of Karamazov's character, must have appeared the
one inevitable way out of his terrible position. That way out was suicide.
He ran for the pistols he had left in pledge with his friend Perhotin
and on the way, as he ran, he pulled out of his pocket the money, for
the sake of which he had stained his hands with his father's gore. Oh,
now he needed money more than ever. Karamazov would die, Karamazov would
shoot himself and it should be remembered! To be sure, he was a poet
and had burnt the candle at both ends all his life. 'To her, to her!
and there, oh, there I will give a feast to the whole world, such as
never was before, that will be remembered and talked of long after! In
the midst of shouts of wild merriment, reckless gypsy songs and dances
I shall raise the glass and drink to the woman I adore and her new-found
happiness! And then, on the spot, at her feet, I shall dash out my brains
before her and punish myself! She will remember Mitya Karamazov sometimes,
she will see how Mitya loved her, she will feel for Mitya!'

"Here we
see in excess a love of effect, a romantic despair and sentimentality,
and the wild recklessness of the Karamazovs. Yes, but there is something
else, gentlemen of the jury, something that cries out in the soul, throbs
incessantly in the mind, and poisons the heart unto death- that something
is conscience, gentlemen of the jury, its judgment, its terrible torments!
The pistol will settle everything, the pistol is the only way out! But
beyond- I don't know whether Karamazov wondered at that moment 'What
lies beyond,' whether Karamazov could, like Hamlet, wonder 'What lies
beyond.' No, gentlemen of the jury, they have their Hamlets, but we still
have our Karamazovs!"

Here Ippolit
Kirillovitch drew a minute picture of Mitya's preparations, the scene
at Perhotin's, at the shop, with the drivers. He quoted numerous words
and actions, confirmed by witnesses, and the picture made a terrible
impression on the audience. The guilt of this harassed and desperate
man stood out clear and convincing, when the facts were brought together.

"What need
had he of precaution? Two or three times he almost confessed, hinted
at it, all but spoke out." (Then followed the evidence given by
witnesses.) "He even cried out to the peasant who drove him, 'Do
you know, you are driving a murderer!' But it was impossible for him
to speak out, he had to get to Mokroe and there to finish his romance.
But what was awaiting the luckless man? Almost from the first minute
at Mokroe he saw that his invincible rival was perhaps by no means so
invincible, that the toast to their new-found happiness was not desired
and would not be acceptable. But you know the facts, gentlemen of the
jury, from the preliminary inquiry. Karamazov's triumph over his rival
was complete and his soul passed into quite a new phase, perhaps the
most terrible phase through which his soul has passed or will pass.

"One may
say with certainty, gentlemen of the jury," the prosecutor continued, "that
outraged nature and the criminal heart bring their own vengeance more
completely than any earthly justice. What's more, justice and punishment
on earth positively alleviate the punishment of nature and are, indeed,
essential to the soul of the criminal at such moments, as its salvation
from despair. For I cannot imagine the horror and moral suffering of
Karamazov when he learnt that she loved him, that for his sake she had
rejected her first lover, that she was summoning him, Mitya, to a new
life, that she was promising him happiness- and when? When everything
was over for him and nothing was possible!

"By the
way, I will note in parenthesis a point of importance for the light it
throws on the prisoner's position at the moment. This woman, this love
of his, had been till the last moment, till the very instant of his arrest,
a being unattainable, passionately desired by him but unattainable. Yet
why did he not shoot himself then, why did he relinquish his design and
even forget where his pistol was? It was just that passionate desire
for love and the hope of satisfying it that restrained him. Throughout
their revels he kept close to his adored mistress, who was at the banquet
with him and was more charming and fascinating to him than ever- he did
not leave her side, abasing himself in his homage before her.

"His passion
might well, for a moment, stifle not only the fear of arrest, but even
the torments of conscience. For a moment, oh, only for a moment! I can
picture the state of mind of the criminal hopelessly enslaved by these
influences- first, the influence of drink, of noise and excitement, of
the thud of the dance and the scream of the song, and of her, flushed
with wine, singing and dancing and laughing to him! Secondly, the hope
in the background that the fatal end might still be far off, that not
till next morning, at least, they would come and take him. So he had
a few hours and that's much, very much! In a few hours one can think
of many things. I imagine that he felt something like what criminals
feel when they are being taken to the scaffold. They have another long,
long street to pass down and at walking pace, past thousands of people.
Then there will be a turning into another street and only at the end
of that street the dread place of execution! I fancy that at the beginning
of the journey the condemned man, sitting on his shameful cart, must
feel that he has infinite life still before him. The houses recede, the
cart moves on- oh, that's nothing, it's still far to the turning into
the second street and he still looks boldly to right and to left at those
thousands of callously curious people with their eyes fixed on him, and
he still fancies that he is just such a man as they. But now the turning
comes to the next street. Oh, that's nothing, nothing, there's still
a whole street before him, and however many houses have been passed,
he will still think there are many left. And so to the very end, to the
very scaffold.

"This I
imagine is how it was with Karamazov then. 'They've not had time yet,'
he must have thought, 'I may still find some way out, oh, there's still
time to make some plan of defence, and now, now- she is so fascinating!'

"His soul
was full of confusion and dread, but he managed, however, to put aside
half his money and hide it somewhere- I cannot otherwise explain the
disappearance of quite half of the three thousand he had just taken from
his father's pillow. He had been in Mokroe more than once before, he
had caroused there for two days together already, he knew the old big
house with all its passages and outbuildings. I imagine that part of
the money was hidden in that house, not long before the arrest, in some
crevice, under some floor, in some corner, under the roof. With what
object? I shall be asked. Why, the catastrophe may take place at once,
of course; he hadn't yet considered how to meet it, he hadn't the time,
his head was throbbing and his heart was with her, but money- money was
indispensable in any case! With money a man is always a man. Perhaps
such foresight at such a moment may strike you as unnatural? But he assures
us himself that a month before, at a critical and exciting moment, he
had halved his money and sewn it up in a little bag. And though that
was not true, as we shall prove directly, it shows the idea was a familiar
one to Karamazov, he had contemplated it. What's more, when he declared
at the inquiry that he had put fifteen hundred roubles in a bag (which
never existed) he may have invented that little bag on the inspiration
of the moment, because he had two hours before divided his money and
hidden half of it at Mokroe till morning, in case of emergency, simply
not to have it on himself. Two extremes, gentlemen of the jury, remember
that Karamazov can contemplate two extremes and both at once.

"We have
looked in the house, but we haven't found the money. It may still be
there or it may have disappeared next day and be in the prisoner's hands
now. In any case he was at her side, on his knees before her, she was
lying on the bed, he had his hands stretched out to her and he had so
entirely forgotten everything that he did not even hear the men coming
to arrest him. He hadn't time to prepare any line of defence in his mind.
He was caught unawares and confronted with his judges, the arbiters of
his destiny.

"Gentlemen
of the jury, there are moments in the execution of our duties when it
is terrible for us to face a man, terrible on his account, too! The moments
of contemplating that animal fear, when the criminal sees that all is
lost, but still struggles, still means to struggle, the moments when
every instinct of self-preservation rises up in him at once and he looks
at you with questioning and suffering eyes, studies you, your face, your
thoughts, uncertain on which side you will strike, and his distracted
mind frames thousands of plans in an instant, but he is still afraid
to speak, afraid of giving himself away! This purgatory of the spirit,
this animal thirst for self-preservation, these humiliating moments of
the human soul, are awful, and sometimes arouse horror and compassion
for the criminal even in the lawyer. And this was what we all witnessed
then.

"At first
he was thunderstruck and in his terror dropped some very compromising
phrases. 'Blood! I've deserved it!' But he quickly restrained himself.
He had not prepared what he was to say, what answer he was to make, he
had nothing but a bare denial ready. 'I am not guilty of my father's
death.' That was his fence for the moment and behind it he hoped to throw
up a barricade of some sort. His first compromising exclamations he hastened
to explain by declaring that he was responsible for the death of the
servant Grigory only. 'Of that bloodshed I am guilty, but who has killed
my father, gentlemen, who has killed him? Who can have killed him, if
not I?' Do you hear, he asked us that, us, who had come to ask him that
question! Do you hear that uttered with such premature haste- 'if not
I'- the animal cunning, the naivete the Karamazov impatience of it? 'I
didn't kill him and you mustn't think I did! I wanted to kill him, gentlemen,
I wanted to kill him,' he hastens to admit (he was in a hurry, in a terrible
hurry), 'but still I am not guilty, it is not I murdered him.' He concedes
to us that he wanted to murder him, as though to say, you can see for
yourselves how truthful I am, so you'll believe all the sooner that I
didn't murder him. Oh, in such cases the criminal is often amazingly
shallow and credulous.

"At that
point one of the lawyers asked him, as it were incidentally, the most
simple question, 'Wasn't it Smerdyakov killed him?' Then, as we expected,
he was horribly angry at our having anticipated him and caught him unawares,
before he had time to pave the way to choose and snatch the moment when
it would be most natural to bring in Smerdyakov's name. He rushed at
once to the other extreme, as he always does, and began to assure us
that Smerdyakov could not have killed him, was not capable of it. But
don't believe him, that was only his cunning; he didn't really give up
the idea of Smerdyakov; on the contrary, he meant to bring him forward
again; for, indeed, he had no one else to bring forward, but he would
do that later, because for the moment that line was spoiled for him.
He would bring him forward perhaps next day, or even a few days later,
choosing an opportunity to cry out to us, 'You know I was more sceptical
about Smerdyakov than you, you remember that yourselves, but now I am
convinced. He killed him, he must have done!' And for the present he
falls back upon a gloomy and irritable denial. Impatience and anger prompted
him, however, to the most inept and incredible explanation of how he
looked into his father's window and how he respectfully withdrew. The
worst of it was that he was unaware of the position of affairs, of the
evidence given by Grigory.

"We proceeded
to search him. The search angered, but encouraged him, the whole three
thousand had not been found on him, only half of it. And no doubt only
at that moment of angry silence, the fiction of the little bag first
occurred to him. No doubt he was conscious himself of the improbability
of the story and strove painfully to make it sound more likely, to weave
it into a romance that would sound plausible. In such cases the first
duty, the chief task of the investigating lawyers, is to prevent the
criminal being prepared, to pounce upon him unexpectedly so that he may
blurt out his cherished ideas in all their simplicity, improbability
and inconsistency. The criminal can only be made to speak by the sudden
and apparently incidental communication of some new fact, of some circumstance
of great importance in the case, of which he had no previous idea and
could not have foreseen. We had such a fact in readiness- that was Grigory's
evidence about the open door through which the prisoner had run out.
He had completely forgotten about that door and had not even suspected
that Grigory could have seen it.

"The effect
of it was amazing. He leapt up and shouted to us, 'Then Smerdyakov murdered
him, it was Smerdyakov!' and so betrayed the basis of the defence he
was keeping back, and betrayed it in its most improbable shape, for Smerdyakov
could only have committed the murder after he had knocked Grigory down
and run away. When we told him that Grigory saw the door was open before
he fell down, and had heard Smerdyakov behind the screen as he came out
of his bedroom- Karamazov was positively crushed. My esteemed and witty
colleague, Nikolay Parfenovitch, told me afterwards that he was almost
moved to tears at the sight of him. And to improve matters, the prisoner
hastened to tell us about the much-talked-of little bag- so be it, you
shall hear this romance!

"Gentlemen
of the jury, I have told you already why I consider this romance not
only an absurdity, but the most improbable invention that could have
been brought forward in the circumstances. If one tried for a bet to
invent the most unlikely story, one could hardly find anything more incredible.
The worst of such stories is that the triumphant romancers can always
be put to confusion and crushed by the very details in which real life
is so rich and which these unhappy and involuntary storytellers neglect
as insignificant trifles. Oh, they have no thought to spare for such
details, their minds are concentrated on their grand invention as a whole,
and fancy anyone daring to pull them up for a trifle! But that's how
they are caught. The prisoner was asked the question, 'Where did you
get the stuff for your little bag and who made it for you?' 'I made it
myself.' 'And where did you get the linen?' The prisoner was positively
offended, he thought it almost insulting to ask him such a trivial question,
and would you believe it, his resentment was genuine! But they are all
like that. 'I tore it off my shirt. "Then we shall find that shirt
among your linen to-morrow, with a piece torn off.' And only fancy, gentlemen
of the jury, if we really had found that torn shirt (and how could we
have failed to find it in his chest of drawers or trunk?) that would
have been a fact, a material fact in support of his statement! But he
was incapable of that reflection. 'I don't remember, it may not have
been off my shirt, I sewed it up in one of my landlady's caps.' 'What
sort of a cap?' 'It was an old cotton rag of hers lying about.' 'And
do you remember that clearly?' 'No, I don't.' And he was angry, very
angry, and yet imagine not remembering it! At the most terrible moments
of man's life, for instance when he is being led to execution, he remembers
just such trifles. He will forget anything but some green roof that has
flashed past him on the road, or a jackdaw on a cross- that he will remember.
He concealed the making of that little bag from his household, he must
have remembered his humiliating fear that someone might come in and find
him needle in hand, how at the slightest sound he slipped behind the
screen (there is a screen in his lodgings).

"But, gentlemen
of the jury, why do I tell you all this, all these details, trifles?" cried
Ippolit Kirillovitch suddenly. "Just because the prisoner still
persists in these absurdities to this moment. He has not explained anything
since that fatal night two months ago, he has not added one actual illuminating
fact to his former fantastic statements; all those are trivialities.
'You must believe it on my honour.' Oh, we are glad to believe it, we
are eager to believe it, even if only on his word of honour! Are we jackals
thirsting for human blood? Show us a single fact in the prisoner's favour
and we shall rejoice; but let it be a substantial, real fact, and not
a conclusion drawn from the prisoner's expression by his own brother,
or that when he beat himself on the breast he must have meant to point
to the little bag, in the darkness, too. We shall rejoice at the new
fact, we shall be the first to repudiate our charge, we shall hasten
to repudiate it. But now justice cries out and we persist, we cannot
repudiate anything."

Ippolit Kirillovitch
passed to his final peroration. He looked as though he was in a fever,
he spoke of the blood that cried for vengeance, the blood of the father
murdered by his son, with the base motive of robbery! He pointed to the
tragic and glaring consistency of the facts.

"And whatever
you may hear from the talented and celebrated counsel for the defence," Ippolit
Kirillovitch could not resist adding, "whatever eloquent and touching
appeals may be made to your sensibilities, remember that at this moment
you are in a temple of justice. Remember that you are the champions of
our justice, the champions of our holy Russia, of her principles, her
family, everything that she holds sacred! Yes, you represent Russia here
at this moment, and your verdict will be heard not in this hall only
but will re-echo throughout the whole of Russia, and all Russia will
hear you, as her champions and her judges, and she will be encouraged
or disheartened by your verdict. Do not disappoint Russia and her expectations.
Our fatal troika dashes on in her headlong flight perhaps to destruction
and in all Russia for long past men have stretched out imploring hands
and called a halt to its furious reckless course. And if other nations
stand aside from that troika that may be, not from respect, as the poet
would fain believe, but simply from horror. From horror, perhaps from
disgust. And well it is that they stand aside, but maybe they will cease
one day to do so and will form a firm wall confronting the hurrying apparition
and will check the frenzied rush of our lawlessness, for the sake of
their own safety, enlightenment and civilisation. Already we have heard
voices of alarm from Europe, they already begin to sound. Do not tempt
them! Do not heap up their growing hatred by a sentence justifying the
murder of a father by his son I

Though Ippolit
Kirillovitch was genuinely moved, he wound up his speech with this rhetorical
appeal- and the effect produced by him was extraordinary. When he had
finished his speech, he went out hurriedly and, as I have mentioned before,
almost fainted in the adjoining room. There was no applause in the court,
but serious persons were pleased. The ladies were not so well satisfied,
though even they were pleased with his eloquence, especially as they
had no apprehensions as to the upshot of the trial and had full trust
in Fetyukovitch. "He will speak at last and of course carry all
before him."

Everyone looked
at Mitya; he sat silent through the whole of the prosecutor's speech,
clenching his teeth, with his hands clasped, and his head bowed. Only
from time to time he raised his head and listened, especially when Grushenka
was spoken of. When the prosecutor mentioned Rakitin's opinion of her,
a smile of contempt and anger passed over his face and he murmured rather
audibly, "The Bernards!" When Ippolit Kirillovitch described
how he had questioned and tortured him at Mokroe, Mitya raised his head
and listened with intense curiosity. At one point he seemed about to
jump up and cry out, but controlled himself and only shrugged his shoulders
disdainfully. People talked afterwards of the end of the speech, of the
prosecutor's feat in examining the prisoner at Mokroe, and jeered at
Ippolit Kirillovitch. "The man could not resist boasting of his
cleverness," they said.

The court was
adjourned, but only for a short interval, a quarter of an hour or twenty
minutes at most. There was a hum of conversation and exclamations in
the audience. I remember some of them.

"A weighty
speech," a gentleman in one group observed gravely.

"He brought
in too much psychology," said another voice.

"But it
was all true, the absolute truth!"

"Yes, he
is first rate at it."

"He summed
it all up."

"Yes, he
summed us up, too," chimed in another voice, "Do you remember,
at the beginning of his speech, making out we were all like Fyodor Pavlovitch?"

"And at
the end, too. But that was all rot."

"And obscure
too."

"He was
a little too much carried away."

"It's unjust,
it's unjust."

"No, it
was smartly done, anyway. He's had long to wait, but he's had his say,
ha ha!"

"What will
the counsel for the defence say?"

In another group
I heard:

"He had
no business to make a thrust at the Petersburg man like that; 'appealing
to your sensibilities'- do you remember?"

"Yes, that
was awkward of him."

"He was
in too great a hurry."

"He is a
nervous man."

"We laugh,
but what must the prisoner be feeling?"

"Yes, what
must it be for Mitya?"

In a third group:

"What lady
is that, the fat one, with the lorgnette, sitting at the end?"

"She is
a general's wife, divorced, I know her."

"That's
why she has the lorgnette."

"She is
not good for much."

"Oh no,
she is a piquante little woman."

"Two places
beyond her there is a little fair woman, she is prettier."

"They caught
him smartly at Mokroe, didn't they, eh?"

"Oh, it
was smart enough. We've heard it before, how often he has told the story
at people's houses!

"And he
couldn't resist doing it now. That's vanity."

"He is a
man with a grievance, he he!"

"Yes, and
quick to take offence. And there was too much rhetoric, such long sentences."

"Yes, he
tries to alarm us, he kept trying to alarm us. Do you remember about
the troika? Something about 'They have Hamlets, but we have, so far,
only Karamazovs!' That was cleverly said!"

"That was
to propitiate the liberals. He is afraid of them."

"Yes, and
he is afraid of the lawyer, too."

"Yes, what
will Fetyukovitch say?"

"Whatever
he says, he won't get round our peasants."

"Don't you
think so?"

A fourth group:

"What he
said about the troika was good, that piece about the other nations."

"And that
was true what he said about other nations not standing it."

"What do
you mean?"

"Why, in
the English Parliament a Member got up last week and speaking about the
Nihilists asked the Ministry whether it was not high time to intervene,
to educate this barbarous people. Ippolit was thinking of him, I know
he was. He was talking about that last week."

"Not an
easy job."

"Not an
easy job? Why not?"

"Why, we'd
shut up Kronstadt and not let them have any corn. Where would they get
it?"

"In America.
They get it from America now."

"Nonsense!"

But the bell
rang, all rushed to their places. Fetyukovitch mounted the tribune.

Chapter 10

The Speech for the Defence. An Argument that
Cuts Both Ways

ALL was hushed as the first words of
the famous orator rang out. The eyes of the audience were fastened upon
him. He began very simply and directly, with an air of conviction, but
not the slightest trace of conceit. He made no attempt at eloquence,
at pathos, or emotional phrases. He was like a man speaking in a circle
of intimate and sympathetic friends. His voice was a fine one, sonorous
and sympathetic, and there was something genuine and simple in the very
sound of it. But everyone realised at once that the speaker might suddenly
rise to genuine pathos and "pierce the heart with untold power." His
language was perhaps more irregular than Ippolit Kirillovitch's, but
he spoke without long phrases, and indeed, with more precision. One thing
did not please the ladies: he kept bending forward, especially at the
beginning of his speech, not exactly bowing, but as though he were about
to dart at his listeners, bending his long spine in half, as though there
were a spring in the middle that enabled him to bend almost at right
angles.

At the beginning
of his speech he spoke rather disconnectedly, without system, one may
say, dealing with facts separately, though, at the end, these facts formed
a whole. His speech might be divided into two parts, the first consisting
of criticism in refutation of the charge, sometimes malicious and sarcastic.
But in the second half he suddenly changed his tone, and even his manner,
and at once rose to pathos. The audience seemed on the lookout for it,
and quivered with enthusiasm.

He went straight
to the point, and began by saying that although he practised in Petersburg,
he had more than once visited provincial towns to defend prisoners, of
whose innocence he had a conviction or at least a preconceived idea. "That
is what has happened to me in the present case," he explained. "From
the very first accounts in the newspapers I was struck by something which
strongly prepossessed me in the prisoner's favour. What interested me
most was a fact which often occurs in legal practice, but rarely, I think,
in such an extreme and peculiar form as in the present case. I ought
to formulate that peculiarity only at the end of my speech, but I will
do so at the very beginning, for it is my weakness to go to work directly,
not keeping my effects in reserve and economising my material. That may
be imprudent on my part, but at least it's sincere. What I have in my
mind is this: there is an overwhelming chain of evidence against the
prisoner, and at the same time not one fact that will stand criticism,
if it is examined separately. As I followed the case more closely in
the papers my idea was more and more confirmed, and I suddenly received
from the prisoner's relatives a request to undertake his defence. I at
once hurried here, and here I became completely convinced. It was to
break down this terrible chain of facts, and to show that each piece
of evidence taken separately was unproved and fantastic, that I undertook
the case."

So Fetyukovitch
began.

"Gentlemen
of the jury," he suddenly protested, "I am new to this district.
I have no preconceived ideas. The prisoner, a man of turbulent and unbridled
temper, has not insulted me. But he has insulted perhaps hundreds of
persons in this town, and so prejudiced many people against him beforehand.
Of course I recognise that the moral sentiment of local society is justly
excited against him. The prisoner is of turbulent and violent temper.
Yet he was received in society here; he was even welcome in the family
of my talented friend, the prosecutor."

(N.B. At these
words there were two or three laughs in the audience, quickly suppressed,
but noticed by all. All of us knew that the prosecutor received Mitya
against his will, solely because he had somehow interested his wife-
a lady of the highest virtue and moral worth, but fanciful, capricious,
and fond of opposing her husband, especially in trifles. Mitya's visits,
however, had not been frequent.)

"Nevertheless
I venture to suggest," Fetyukovitch continued, "that in spite
of his independent mind and just character, my opponent may have formed
a mistaken prejudice against my unfortunate client. Oh, that is so natural;
the unfortunate man has only too well deserved such prejudice. Outraged
morality, and still more outraged taste, is often relentless. We have,
in the talented prosecutor's speech, heard a stern analysis of the prisoner's
character and conduct, and his severe critical attitude to the case was
evident. And, what's more, he went into psychological subtleties into
which he could not have entered, if he had the least conscious and malicious
prejudice against the prisoner. But there are things which are even worse,
even more fatal in such cases, than the most malicious and consciously
unfair attitude. It is worse if we are carried away by the artistic instinct,
by the desire to create, so to speak, a romance, especially if God has
endowed us with psychological insight. Before I started on my way here,
I was warned in Petersburg, and was myself aware, that I should find
here a talented opponent whose psychological insight and subtlety had
gained him peculiar renown in legal circles of recent years. But profound
as psychology is, it's a knife that cuts both ways." (Laughter among
the public.) "You will, of course, forgive me my comparison; I can't
boast of eloquence. But I will take as an example any point in the prosecutor's
speech.

"The prisoner,
running away in the garden in the dark, climbed over the fence, was seized
by the servant, and knocked him down with a brass pestle. Then he jumped
back into the garden and spent five minutes over the man, trying to discover
whether he had killed him or not. And the prosecutor refuses to believe
the prisoner's statement that he ran to old Grigory out of pity. 'No,'
he says, 'such sensibility is impossible at such a moment, that's unnatural;
he ran to find out whether the only witness of his crime was dead or
alive, and so showed that he had committed the murder, since he would
not have run back for any other reason.'

"Here you
have psychology; but let us take the same method and apply it to the
case the other way round, and our result will be no less probable. The
murderer, we are told, leapt down to find out, as a precaution, whether
the witness was alive or not, yet he had left in his murdered father's
study, as the prosecutor himself argues, an amazing piece of evidence
in the shape of a torn envelope, with an inscription that there had been
three thousand roubles in it. 'If he had carried that envelope away with
him, no one in the world would have known of that envelope and of the
notes in it, and that the money had been stolen by the prisoner.' Those
are the prosecutor's own words. So on one side you see a complete absence
of precaution, a man who has lost his head and run away in a fright,
leaving that clue on the floor, and two minutes later, when he has killed
another man, we are entitled to assume the most heartless and calculating
foresight in him. But even admitting this was so, it is psychological
subtlety, I suppose, that discerns that under certain circumstances I
become as bloodthirsty and keen-sighted as a Caucasian eagle, while at
the next I am as timid and blind as a mole. But if I am so bloodthirsty
and cruelly calculating that when I kill a man I only run back to find
out whether he is alive to witness against me, why should I spend five
minutes looking after my victim at the risk of encountering other witnesses?
Why soak my handkerchief, wiping the blood off his head so that it may
be evidence against me later? If he were so cold-hearted and calculating,
why not hit the servant on the head again and again with the same pestle
so as to kill him outright and relieve himself of all anxiety about the
witness?

"Again,
though he ran to see whether the witness was alive, he left another witness
on the path, that brass pestle which he had taken from the two women,
and which they could always recognise afterwards as theirs, and prove
that he had taken it from them. And it is not as though he had forgotten
it on the path, dropped it through carelessness or haste, no, he had
flung away his weapon, for it was found fifteen paces from where Grigory
lay. Why did he do so? just because he was grieved at having killed a
man, an old servant; and he flung away the pestle with a curse, as a
murderous weapon. That's how it must have been, what other reason could
he have had for throwing it so far? And if he was capable of feeling
grief and pity at having killed a man, it shows that he was innocent
of his father's murder. Had he murdered him, he would never have run
to another victim out of pity; then he would have felt differently; his
thoughts would have been centred on self-preservation. He would have
had none to spare for pity, that is beyond doubt. On the contrary, he
would have broken his skull instead of spending five minutes looking
after him. There was room for pity and good-feeling just because his
conscience had been clear till then. Here we have a different psychology.
I have purposely resorted to this method, gentlemen of the jury, to show
that you can prove anything by it. It all depends on who makes use of
it. Psychology lures even most serious people into romancing, and quite
unconsciously. I am speaking of the abuse of psychology, gentlemen."

Sounds of approval
and laughter, at the expense of the prosecutor, were again audible in
the court. I will not repeat the speech in detail; I will only quote
some passages from it, some leading points.

Chapter 11

There Was No Money. There Was No Robbery

THERE was one point that struck everyone in Fetyukovitch's speech. He flatly denied
the existence of the fatal three thousand roubles, and consequently,
the possibility of their having been stolen.

"Gentlemen
of the jury," he began. "Every new and unprejudiced observer
must be struck by a characteristic peculiarity in the present case, namely,
the charge of robbery, and the complete impossibility of proving that
there was anything to be stolen. We are told that money was stolen- three
thousand roubles but whether those roubles ever existed, nobody knows.
Consider, how have we heard of that sum, and who has seen the notes?
The only person who saw them, and stated that they had been put in the
envelope, was the servant, Smerdyakov. He had spoken of it to the prisoner
and his brother, Ivan Fyodorovitch, before the catastrophe. Madame Svyetlov,
too, had been told of it. But not one of these three persons had actually
seen the notes, no one but Smerdyakov had seen them.

"Here the
question arises, if it's true that they did exist, and that Smerdyakov
had seen them, when did he see them for the last time? What if his master
had taken the notes from under his bed and put them back in his cash-box
without telling him? Note, that according to Smerdyakov's story the notes
were kept under the mattress; the prisoner must have pulled them out,
and yet the bed was absolutely unrumpled; that is carefully recorded
in the protocol. How could the prisoner have found the notes without
disturbing the bed? How could he have helped soiling with his blood-stained
hands the fine and spotless linen with which the bed had been purposely
made?

"But I shall
be asked: What about the envelope on the floor? Yes, it's worth saying
a word or two about that envelope. I was somewhat surprised just now
to hear the highly talented prosecutor declare of himself- of himself,
observe- that but for that envelope, but for its being left on the floor,
no one in the world would have known of the existence of that envelope
and the notes in it, and therefore of the prisoner's having stolen it.
And so that torn scrap of paper is, by the prosecutor's own admission,
the sole proof on which the charge of robbery rests, 'otherwise no one
would have known of the robbery, nor perhaps even of the money.' But
is the mere fact that that scrap of paper was lying on the floor a proof
that there was money in it, and that that money had been stolen? Yet,
it will be objected, Smerdyakov had seen the money in the envelope. But
when, when had he seen it for the last time, I ask you that? I talked
to Smerdyakov, and he told me that he had seen the notes two days before
the catastrophe. Then why not imagine that old Fyodor Pavlovitch, locked
up alone in impatient and hysterical expectation of the object of his
adoration, may have whiled away the time by breaking open the envelope
and taking out the notes. 'What's the use of the envelope?' he may have
asked himself. 'She won't believe the notes are there, but when I show
her the thirty rainbow-coloured notes in one roll, it will make more
impression, you may be sure, it will make her mouth water.' And so he
tears open the envelope, takes out the money, and flings the envelope
on the floor, conscious of being the owner and untroubled by any fears
of leaving evidence.

"Listen,
gentlemen, could anything be more likely than this theory and such an
action? Why is it out of the question? But if anything of the sort could
have taken place, the charge of robbery falls to the ground; if there
was no money, there was no theft of it. If the envelope on the floor
may be taken as evidence that there had been money in it, why may I not
maintain the opposite, that the envelope was on the floor because the
money had been taken from it by its owner?

"But I shall
be asked what became of the money if Fyodor Pavlovitch took it out of
the envelope since it was not found when the police searched the house?
In the first place, part of the money was found in the cash-box, and
secondly, he might have taken it out that morning or the evening before
to make some other use of it, to give or send it away; he may have changed
his idea, his plan of action completely, without thinking it necessary
to announce the fact to Smerdyakov beforehand. And if there is the barest
possibility of such an explanation, how can the prisoner be so positively
accused of having committed murder for the sake of robbery, and of having
actually carried out that robbery? This is encroaching on the domain
of romance. If it is maintained that something has been stolen, the thing
must be produced, or at least its existence must be proved beyond doubt.
Yet no one had ever seen these notes.

"Not long
ago in Petersburg a young man of eighteen, hardly more than a boy, who
carried on a small business as a costermonger, went in broad daylight
into a moneychanger's shop with an axe, and with extraordinary, typical
audacity killed the master of the shop and carried off fifteen hundred
roubles. Five hours later he was arrested, and, except fifteen roubles
he had already managed to spend, the whole sum was found on him. Moreover,
the shopman, on his return to the shop after the murder, informed the
police not only of the exact sum stolen, but even of the notes and gold
coins of which that sum was made up, and those very notes and coins were
found on the criminal. This was followed by a full and genuine confession
on the part of the murderer. That's what I call evidence, gentlemen of
the jury! In that case I know, I see, I touch the money, and cannot deny
its existence. Is it the same in the present case? And yet it is a question
of life and death.

"Yes, I
shall be told, but he was carousing that night, squandering money; he
was shown to have had fifteen hundred roubles- where did he get the money?
But the very fact that only fifteen hundred could be found, and the other
half of the sum could nowhere be discovered, shows that that money was
not the same, and had never been in any envelope. By strict calculation
of time it was proved at the preliminary inquiry that the prisoner ran
straight from those women servants to Perhotin's without going home,
and that he had been nowhere. So he had been all the time in company
and therefore could not have divided the three thousand in half and hidden
half in the town. It's just this consideration that has led the prosecutor
to assume that the money is hidden in some crevice at Mokroe. Why not
in the dungeons of the castle of Udolpho, gentlemen? Isn't this supposition
really too fantastic and too romantic? And observe, if that supposition
breaks down, the whole charge of robbery is scattered to the winds, for
in that case what could have become of the other fifteen hundred roubles?
By what miracle could they have disappeared, since it's proved the prisoner
went nowhere else? And we are ready to ruin a man's life with such tales!

"I shall
be told that he could not explain where he got the fifteen hundred that
he had. and everyone knew that he was without money before that night.
Who knew it, pray? The prisoner has made a clear and unflinching statement
of the source of that money, and if you will have it so, gentlemen of
the jury, nothing can be more probable than that statement, and more
consistent with the temper and spirit of the prisoner. The prosecutor
is charmed with his own romance. A man of weak will, who had brought
himself to take the three thousand so insultingly offered by his betrothed,
could not, we are told, have set aside half and sewn it up, but would,
even if he had done so, have unpicked it every two days and taken out
a hundred, and so would have spent it all in a month. All this, you will
remember, was put forward in a tone what brooked no contradiction. But
what if the thing happened quite differently? What if you've been weaving
a romance, and about quite a different kind of man? That's just it, you
have invented quite a different man!

"I shall
be told, perhaps, there are witnesses that he spent on one day all that
three thousand given him by his betrothed a month before the catastrophe,
so he could not have divided the sum in half. But who are these witnesses?
The value of their evidence has been shown in court already. Besides,
in another man's hand a crust always seems larger, and no one of these
witnesses counted that money; they all judged simply at sight. And the
witness Maximov has testified that the prisoner had twenty thousand in
his hand. You see, gentlemen of the jury, psychology is a two edged weapon.
Let me turn the other edge now and see what comes of it.

"A month
before the catastrophe the prisoner was entrusted by Katerina Ivanovna
with three thousand roubles to send off by post. But the question is:
is it true that they were entrusted to him in such an insulting and degrading
way as was proclaimed just now? The first statement made by the young
lady on the subject was different, perfectly different. In the second
statement we heard only cries of resentment and revenge, cries of long-concealed
hatred. And the very fact that the witness gave her first evidence incorrectly
gives us a right to conclude that her second piece of evidence may have
been incorrect also. The prosecutor will not, dare not (his own words)
touch on that story. So be it. I will not touch on it either, but will
only venture to observe that if a lofty and high-principled person, such
as that highly respected young lady unquestionably is, if such a person,
I say, allows herself suddenly in court to contradict her first statement,
with the obvious motive of ruining the prisoner, it is clear that this
evidence has been given not impartially, not coolly. Have not we the
right to assume that a revengeful woman might have exaggerated much?
Yes, she may well have exaggerated, in particular, the insult and humiliation
of her offering him the money. No, it was offered in such a way that
it was possible to take it, especially for a man so easygoing as the
prisoner, above all, as he expected to receive shortly from his father
the three thousand roubles that he reckoned was owing to him. It was
unreflecting of him, but it was just his irresponsible want of reflection
that made him so confident that his father would give him the money,
that he would get it, and so could always dispatch the money entrusted
to him and repay the debt.

"But the
prosecutor refuses to allow that he could the same day have set aside
half the money and sewn it up in a little bag. That's not his character,
he tells us, he couldn't have had such feelings. But yet he talked himself
of the broad Karamazov nature; he cried out about the two extremes which
a Karamazov can contemplate at once. Karamazov is just such a two-sided
nature, fluctuating between two extremes, that even when moved by the
most violent craving for riotous gaiety, he can pull himself up, if something
strikes him on the other side. And on the other side is love that new
love which had flamed up in his heart, and for that love he needed money;
oh, far more than for carousing with his mistress. If she were to say
to him, 'I am yours, I won't have Fyodor Pavlovitch,' then he must have
money to take her away. That was more important than carousing. Could
a Karamazov fail to understand it? That anxiety was just what he was
suffering from- what is there improbable in his laying aside that money
and concealing it in case of emergency?

"But time
passed, and Fyodor Pavlovitch did not give the prisoner the expected
three thousand; on the contrary, the latter heard that he meant to use
this sum to seduce the woman he, the prisoner, loved. 'If Fyodor Pavlovitch
doesn't give the money,' he thought, 'I shall be put in the position
of a thief before Katerina Ivanovna.' And then the idea presented itself
to him that he would go to Katerina Ivanovna, lay before her the fifteen
hundred roubles he still carried round his neck, and say, 'I am a scoundrel,
but not a thief.' So here we have already a twofold reason why he should
guard that sum of money as the apple of his eye, why he shouldn't unpick
the little bag, and spend it a hundred at a time. Why should you deny
the prisoner a sense of honour? Yes, he has a sense of honour, granted
that it's misplaced, granted it's often mistaken, yet it exists and amounts
to a passion, and he has proved that.

"But now
the affair becomes even more complex; his jealous torments reach a climax,
and those same two questions torture his fevered brain more and more:
'If I repay Katerina Ivanovna, where can I find the means to go off with
Grushenka?' If he behaved wildly, drank, and made disturbances in the
taverns in the course of that month, it was perhaps because he was wretched
and strained beyond his powers of endurance. These two questions became
so acute that they drove him at last to despair. He sent his younger
brother to beg for the last time for the three thousand roubles, but
without waiting for a reply, burst in himself and ended by beating the
old man in the presence of witnesses. After that he had no prospect of
getting it from anyone; his father would not give it him after that beating.

"The same
evening he struck himself on the breast, just on the upper part of the
breast where the little bag was, and swore to his brother that he had
the means of not being a scoundrel, but that still he would remain a
scoundrel, for he foresaw that he would not use that means, that he wouldn't
have the character, that he wouldn't have the will-power to do it. Why,
why does the prosecutor refuse to believe the evidence of Alexey Karamazov,
given so genuinely and sincerely, so spontaneously and convincingly?
And why, on the contrary, does he force me to believe in money hidden
in a crevice, in the dungeons of the castle of Udolpho?

"The same
evening, after his talk with his brother, the prisoner wrote that fatal
letter, and that letter is the chief, the most stupendous proof of the
prisoner having committed robbery! 'I shall beg from everyone, and if
I don't get it I shall murder my father and shall take the envelope with
the pink ribbon on it from under his mattress as soon as Ivan has gone.'
A full programme of the murder, we are told, so it must have been he.
'It has all been done as he wrote,' cries the prosecutor.

"But in
the first place, it's the letter of a drunken man and written in great
irritation; secondly, he writes of the envelope from what he has heard
from Smerdyakov again, for he has not seen the envelope himself; and
thirdly, he wrote it indeed, but how can you prove that he did it? Did
the prisoner take the envelope from under the pillow, did he find the
money, did that money exist indeed? And was it to get money that the
prisoner ran off, if you remember? He ran off post-haste not to steal,
but to find out where she was, the woman who had crushed him. He was
not running to carry out a programme, to carry out what he had written,
that is, not for an act of premeditated robbery, but he ran suddenly,
spontaneously, in a jealous fury. Yes! I shall be told, but when he got
there and murdered him he seized the money, too. But did he murder him
after all? The charge of robbery I repudiate with indignation. A man
cannot be accused of robbery, if it's impossible to state accurately
what he has stolen; that's an axiom. But did he murder him without robbery,
did he murder him at all? Is that proved? Isn't that, too, a romance?"

Chapter 12

And There Was No Murder Either

"ALLOW me, gentlemen of the jury, to remind you that a man's life is at stake and
that you must be careful. We have heard the prosecutor himself admit
that until to-day he hesitated to accuse the prisoner of a full and conscious
premeditation of the crime; he hesitated till he saw that fatal drunken
letter which was produced in court to-day. 'All was done as written.'
But, I repeat again, he was running to her, to seek her, solely to find
out where she was. That's a fact that can't be disputed. Had she been
at home, he would not have run away, but would have remained at her side,
and so would not have done what he promised in the letter. He ran unexpectedly
and accidentally, and by that time very likely he did not even remember
his drunken letter. 'He snatched up the pestle,' they say, and you will
remember how a whole edifice of psychology was built on that pestle-
why he was bound to look at that pestle as a weapon, to snatch it up,
and so on, and so on. A very commonplace idea occurs to me at this point:
What if that pestle had not been in sight, had not been lying on the
shelf from which it was snatched by the prisoner, but had been put away
in a cupboard? It would not have caught the prisoner's eye, and he would
have run away without a weapon, with empty hands, and then he would certainly
not have killed anyone. How then can I look upon the pestle as a proof
of premeditation?

"Yes, but
he talked in the taverns of murdering his father, and two days before,
on the evening when he wrote his drunken letter, he was quiet and only
quarrelled with a shopman in the tavern, because a Karamazov could not
help quarrelling, forsooth! But my answer to that is, that, if he was
planning such a murder in accordance with his letter, he certainly would
not have quarrelled even with a shopman, and probably would not have
gone into the tavern at all, because a person plotting such a crime seeks
quiet and retirement, seeks to efface himself, to avoid being seen and
heard, and that not from calculation, but from instinct. Gentlemen of
the jury, the psychological method is a two-edged weapon, and we, too,
can use it. As for all this shouting in taverns throughout the month,
don't we often hear children, or drunkards coming out of taverns shout,
'I'll kill you'? but they don't murder anyone. And that fatal letter-
isn't that simply drunken irritability, too? Isn't that simply the shout
of the brawler outside the tavern, 'I'll kill you! I'll kill the lot
of you!' Why not, why could it not be that? What reason have we to call
that letter 'fatal' rather than absurd? Because his father has been found
murdered, because a witness saw the prisoner running out of the garden
with a weapon in his hand, and was knocked down by him: therefore, we
are told, everything was done as he had planned in writing, and the letter
was not 'absurd,' but 'fatal.'

"Now, thank
God! we've come to the real point: 'since he was in the garden, he must
have murdered him.' In those few words: 'since he was, then he must'
lies the whole case for the prosecution. He was there, so he must have.
And what if there is no must about it, even if he was there? Oh, I admit
that the chain of evidence- the coincidences- are really suggestive.
But examine all these facts separately, regardless of their connection.
Why, for instance, does the prosecution refuse to admit the truth of
the prisoner's statement that he ran away from his father's window? Remember
the sarcasms in which the prosecutor indulged at the expense of the respectful
and 'pious' sentiments which suddenly came over the murderer. But what
if there were something of the sort, a feeling of religious awe, if not
of filial respect? 'My mother must have been praying for me at that moment,'
were the prisoner's words at the preliminary inquiry, and so he ran away
as soon as he convinced himself that Madame Svyetlov was not in his father's
house. 'But he could not convince himself by looking through the window,'
the prosecutor objects. But why couldn't he? Why? The window opened at
the signals given by the prisoner. Some word might have been uttered
by Fyodor Pavlovitch, some exclamation which showed the prisoner that
she was not there. Why should we assume everything as we imagine it,
as we make up our minds to imagine it? A thousand things may happen in
reality which elude the subtlest imagination.

"'Yes, but
Grigory saw the door open and so the prisoner certainly was in the house,
therefore he killed him.' Now about that door, gentlemen of the jury....
Observe that we have only the statement of one witness as to that door,
and he was at the time in such a condition, that- but supposing the door
was open; supposing the prisoner has lied in denying it, from an instinct
of self-defence, natural in his position; supposing he did go into the
house- well, what then? How does it follow that because he was there
he committed the murder? He might have dashed in, run through the rooms;
might have pushed his father away; might have struck him; but as soon
as he had made sure Madame Svyetlov was not there, he may have run away
rejoicing that she was not there and that he had not killed his father.
And it was perhaps just because he had escaped from the temptation to
kill his father, because he had a clear conscience and was rejoicing
at not having killed him, that he was capable of a pure feeling, the
feeling of pity and compassion, and leapt off the fence a minute later
to the assistance of Grigory after he had, in his excitement, knocked
him down.

"With terrible
eloquence the prosecutor has described to us the dreadful state of the
prisoner's mind at Mokroe when love again lay before him calling him
to new life, while love was impossible for him because he had his father's
bloodstained corpse behind him and beyond that corpse- retribution. And
yet the prosecutor allowed him love, which he explained, according to
his method, talking about this drunken condition, about a criminal being
taken to execution, about it being still far off, and so on and so on.
But again I ask, Mr. Prosecutor, have you not invented a new personality?
Is the prisoner so coarse and heartless as to be able to think at that
moment of love and of dodges to escape punishment, if his hands were
really stained with his father's blood? No, no, no! As soon as it was
made plain to him that she loved him and called him to her side, promising
him new happiness, oh! then, I protest he must have felt the impulse
to suicide doubled, trebled, and must have killed himself, if he had
his father's murder on his conscience. Oh, no! he would not have forgotten
where his pistols lay! I know the prisoner: the savage, stony heartlessness
ascribed to him by the prosecutor is inconsistent with his character.
He would have killed himself, that's certain. He did not kill himself
just because 'his mother's prayers had saved him,' and he was innocent
of his father's blood. He was troubled, he was grieving that night at
Mokroe only about old Grigory and praying to God that the old man would
recover, that his blow had not been fatal, and that he would not have
to suffer for it. Why not accept such an interpretation of the facts?
What trustworthy proof have we that the prisoner is lying?

"But we
shall be told at once again, 'There is his father's corpse! If he ran
away without murdering him, who did murder him?' Here, I repeat, you
have the whole logic of the prosecution. Who murdered him, if not he?
There's no one to put in his place.

"Gentlemen
of the jury, is that really so? Is it positively, actually true that
there is no one else at all? We've heard the prosecutor count on his
fingers all the persons who were in that house that night. They were
five in number; three of them, I agree, could not have been responsible-
the murdered man himself, old Grigory, and his wife. There are left then
the prisoner and Smerdyakov, and the prosecutor dramatically exclaims
that the prisoner pointed to Smerdyakov because he had no one else to
fix on, that had there been a sixth person, even a phantom of a sixth
person, he would have abandoned the charge against Smerdyakov at once
in shame and have accused that other. But, gentlemen of the jury, why
may I not draw the very opposite conclusion? There are two persons- the
prisoner and Smerdyakov. Why can I not say that you accuse my client,
simply because you have no one else to accuse? And you have no one else
only because you have determined to exclude Smerdyakov from all suspicion.

"It's true,
indeed, Smerdyakov is accused only by the prisoner, his two brothers,
and Madame Svyetlov. But there are others who accuse him: there are vague
rumours of a question, of a suspicion, an obscure report, a feeling of
expectation. Finally, we have the evidence of a combination of facts
very suggestive, though, I admit, inconclusive. In the first place we
have precisely on the day of the catastrophe that fit, for the genuineness
of which the prosecutor, for some reason, has felt obliged to make a
careful defence. Then Smerdyakov's sudden suicide on the eve of the trial.
Then the equally startling evidence given in court to-day by the elder
of the prisoner's brothers, who had believed in his guilt, but has to-day
produced a bundle of notes and proclaimed Smerdyakov as the murderer.
Oh, I fully share the court's and the prosecutor's conviction that Ivan
Karamazov is suffering from brain fever, that his statement may really
be a desperate effort, planned in delirium, to save his brother by throwing
the guilt on the dead man. But again Smerdyakov's name is pronounced,
again there is a suggestion of mystery. There is something unexplained,
incomplete. And perhaps it may one day be explained. But we won't go
into that now. Of that later.

"The court
has resolved to go on with the trial, but, meantime, I might make a few
remarks about the character-sketch of Smerdyakov drawn with subtlety
and talent by the prosecutor. But while I admire his talent I cannot
agree with him. I have visited Smerdyakov, I have seen him and talked
to him, and he made a very different impression on me. He was weak in
health, it is true; but in character, in spirit, he was by no means the
weak man the prosecutor has made him out to be. I found in him no trace
of the timidity on which the prosecutor so insisted. There was no simplicity
about him, either. I found in him, on the contrary, an extreme mistrustfulness
concealed under a mask of naivete, and an intelligence of considerable
range. The prosecutor was too simple in taking him for weak-minded. He
made a very definite impression on me: I left him with the conviction
that he was a distinctly spiteful creature, excessively ambitious, vindictive,
and intensely envious. I made some inquiries: he resented his parentage,
was ashamed of it, and would clench his teeth when he remembered that
he was the son of 'stinking Lizaveta.' He was disrespectful to the servant
Grigory and his wife, who had cared for him in his childhood. He cursed
and jeered at Russia. He dreamed of going to France and becoming a Frenchman.
He used often to say that he hadn't the means to do so. I fancy he loved
no one but himself and had a strangely high opinion of himself. His conception
of culture was limited to good clothes, clean shirt-fronts and polished
boots. Believing himself to be the illegitimate son of Fyodor Pavlovitch
(there is evidence of this), he might well have resented his position,
compared with that of his master's legitimate sons. They had everything,
he nothing. They had all the rights, they had the inheritance, while
he was only the cook. He told me himself that he had helped Fyodor Pavlovitch
to put the notes in the envelope. The destination of that sum- a sum
which would have made his career- must have been hateful to him. Moreover,
he saw three thousand roubles in new rainbow-coloured notes. (I asked
him about that on purpose.) Oh, beware of showing an ambitious and envious
man a large sum of money at once! And it was the first time he had seen
so much money in the hands of one man. The sight of the rainbow-coloured
notes may have made a morbid impression on his imagination, but with
no immediate results.

"The talented
prosecutor, with extraordinary subtlety, sketched for us all the arguments
for and against the hypothesis of Smerdyakov's guilt, and asked us in
particular what motive he had in feigning a fit. But he may not have
been feigning at all, the fit may have happened quite naturally, but
it may have passed off quite naturally, and the sick man may have recovered,
not completely perhaps, but still regaining consciousness, as happens
with epileptics.

"The prosecutor
asks at what moment could Smerdyakov have committed the murder. But it
is very easy to point out that moment. He might have waked up from deep
sleep (for he was only asleep- an epileptic fit is always followed by
a deep sleep) at that moment when the old Grigory shouted at the top
of his voice 'Parricide!' That shout in the dark and stillness may have
waked Smerdyakov whose sleep may have been less sound at the moment:
he might naturally have waked up an hour before.

"Getting
out of bed, he goes almost unconsciously and with no definite motive
towards the sound to see what's the matter. His head is still clouded
with his attack, his faculties are half asleep; but, once in the garden,
he walks to the lighted windows and he hears terrible news from his master,
who would be, of course, glad to see him. His mind sets to work at once.
He hears all the details from his frightened master, and gradually in
his disordered brain there shapes itself an idea- terrible, but seductive
and irresistibly logical. To kill the old man, take the three thousand,
and throw all the blame on to his young master. A terrible lust of money,
of booty, might seize upon him as he realised his security from detection.
Oh! these sudden and irresistible impulses come so often when there is
a favourable opportunity, and especially with murderers who have had
no idea of committing a murder beforehand. And Smerdyakov may have gone
in and carried out his plan. With what weapon? Why, with any stone picked
up in the garden. But what for, with what object? Why, the three thousand
which means a career for him. Oh, I am not contradicting myself- the
money may have existed. And perhaps Smerdyakov alone knew where to find
it, where his master kept it. And the covering of the money- the torn
envelope on the floor?

"Just now,
when the prosecutor was explaining his subtle theory that only an inexperienced
thief like Karamazov would have left the envelope on the floor, and not
one like Smerdyakov, who would have avoided leaving a piece of evidence
against himself, I thought as I listened that I was hearing something
very familiar, and, would you believe it, I have heard that very argument,
that very conjecture, of how Karamazov would have behaved, precisely
two days before, from Smerdyakov himself. What's more, it struck me at
the time. I fancied that there was an artificial simplicity about him;
that he was in a hurry to suggest this idea to me that I might fancy
it was my own. He insinuated it, as it were. Did he not insinuate the
same idea at the inquiry and suggest it to the talented prosecutor?

"I shall
be asked, 'What about the old woman, Grigory's wife? She heard the sick
man moaning close by, all night.' Yes, she heard it, but that evidence
is extremely unreliable. I knew a lady who complained bitterly that she
had been kept awake all night by a dog in the yard. Yet the poor beast,
it appeared, had only yelped once or twice in the night. And that's natural.
If anyone is asleep and hears a groan he wakes up, annoyed at being waked,
but instantly falls asleep again. Two hours later, again a groan, he
wakes up and falls asleep again; and the same thing again two hours later-
three times altogether in the night. Next morning the sleeper wakes up
and complains that someone has been groaning all night and keeping him
awake. And it is bound to seem so to him: the intervals of two hours
of sleep he does not remember, he only remembers the moments of waking,
so he feels he has been waked up all night.

"But why,
why, asks the prosecutor, did not Smerdyakov confess in his last letter?
Why did his conscience prompt him to one step and not to both? But, excuse
me, conscience implies penitence, and the suicide may not have felt penitence,
but only despair. Despair and penitence are two very different things.
Despair may be vindictive and irreconcilable, and the suicide, laying
his hands on himself, may well have felt redoubled hatred for those whom
he had envied all his life.

"Gentlemen
of the jury, beware of a miscarriage of justice! What is there unlikely
in all I have put before you just now? Find the error in my reasoning;
find the impossibility, the absurdity. And if there is but a shade of
possibility, but a shade of probability in my propositions, do not condemn
him. And is there only a shade? I swear by all that is sacred, I fully
believe in the explanation of the murder I have just put forward. What
troubles me and makes me indignant is that of all the mass of facts heaped
up by the prosecution against the prisoner, there is not a single one
certain and irrefutable. And yet the unhappy man is to be ruined by the
accumulation of these facts. Yes, the accumulated effect is awful: the
blood, the blood dripping from his fingers, the bloodstained shirt, the
dark night resounding with the shout 'Parricide!' and the old man falling
with a broken head. And then the mass of phrases, statements, gestures,
shouts! Oh! this has so much influence, it can so bias the mind; but,
gentlemen of the jury, can it bias your minds? Remember, you have been
given absolute power to bind and to loose, but the greater the power,
the more terrible its responsibility.

"I do not
draw back one iota from what I have said just now, but suppose for one
moment I agreed with the prosecution that my luckless client had stained
his hands with his father's blood. This is only hypothesis, I repeat;
I never for one instant doubt of his innocence. But, so be it, I assume
that my client is guilty of parricide. Even so, hear what I have to say.
I have it in my heart to say something more to you, for I feel that there
must be a great conflict in your hearts and minds.... Forgive my referring
to your hearts and minds, gentlemen of the jury, but I want to be truthful
and sincere to the end. Let us all be sincere!"

At this point
the speech was interrupted by rather loud applause. The last words, indeed,
were pronounced with a note of such sincerity that everyone felt that
he really might have something to say, and that what he was about to
say would be of the greatest consequence. But the President, hearing
the applause, in a loud voice threatened to clear the court if such an
incident were repeated. Every sound was hushed and Fetyukovitch began
in a voice full of feeling quite unlike the tone he had used hitherto.